


Lady Lazarus #1

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/F, Femslashex Treat, Street Level Superheroes, brief appearances by the rest of Team Machine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 10:11:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8397571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: Cole had coined the name of Project Lazarus, and, like, the third commenter on that video of Shaw resurrecting on a New York street had come up with the Lady Lazarus moniker, which annoyingly enough had stuck.Shaw was pretty sure that Root had given herself her own supervillain name.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tamaraface](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamaraface/gifts).



Shaw had the sleeves of her hoodie tugged down past her wrists and the hood pulled low over her scowling face, even though sitting on an empty fire escape at three in the morning was one of the few places she was still unlikely to be recognised or bothered.

That _stupid_ YouTube video.

She heard a window above her sliding open. "Lady Lazarus," said a lilting female voice, and Shaw tipped her head back so that the lanky brunette got the full effect of her eye roll.

"Don't call me that, _Root_."

Cole had coined the name of Project Lazarus, and, like, the third commenter on that video of Shaw resurrecting on a New York street had come up with the Lady Lazarus moniker, which annoyingly enough had stuck.

Shaw was pretty sure that Root had given herself her own supervillain name.

Root was too tall to climb out of a window gracefully, and Shaw got an enjoyable moment of watching her awkwardly clamber out onto the fire escape.

"Not exactly Catwoman, are you?" she said as Root straightened up.

Root ignored her and nodded back at the apartment she'd just half fallen out of. "The occupant blackout drinks and isn't always conscientious about locking his door." 

Shaw didn't bother asking how Root could have known that. "Somebody dangerous could have gotten in."

The fire escape reverberated as Root descended and sat just a little too close to Shaw. 

"No," said Shaw.

Root blinked and Shaw thought she might actually be trying to flutter her eyelashes. "I haven't asked you anything yet."

"I'm not going to your ridiculous superhuman support group."

"Despite what John may have told you, it's not _exactly_ a support group."

Root pulled a card from her pocket and pressed it into Shaw's hand; it showed a time, date, and address.

"Still not going."

"Oh," said Root, leaning closer, her lips twitching up knowingly, "I think you are."

Before Shaw could do anything about the fact that they were all but breathing the same air - probably something violent - Root had disappeared with a clang of metal stairs and a gentle _oof_ as she hit the floor back inside the apartment.

*

Shaw went to the address on the card, but only because it was two doors down from a deli she liked. 

She threw her sandwich wrapper in the trash, wiped her greasy fingers on her black pants, and pushed the door open. She descended a short flight of stairs that led to a dead end. The space housed cleaning supplies that didn't look like they'd seen much use lately, as well as a vending machine that, Shaw quickly checked, yeah, was broken. 

Shaw huffed and almost turned to leave, but Root had said that Shaw would show, and as annoying as it was that the other woman was never wrong, Root could see the future--

*

"I can't see the future," Root had told her once. Shaw wouldn't have bothered listening except that at the time she'd been immobilized, tied to a chair, and waiting for a hotel iron to heat up so Root could begin her amateur torture attempt.

"Yeah, because if you could you'd have turned that iron on earlier, right?"

Root had ignored her, unzipped Shaw's hoodie, and kept up her monologue. "I can see _potential_ futures, and tailor my actions accordingly. For instance, I can see the future where you tell me everything I want to know about Project Lazarus, and--" Root had pressed the pad of her thumb to the iron with a hiss "--the one where you don't."

*

Root showed up in the overgrown custodian's closet at the same time as a tall, good-looking guy in a bespoke suit. 

"Sameen, you already know John, right?"

"Sure," she said, "the Man in the Suit himself."

John Reese had been the first one to embrace this street level superhero shit, although Shaw wasn't sure what he was doing on friendly terms with Root, who had basically been a Bond villain when Shaw had first met her. 

"So," Shaw kicked out at a bucket and mop, "this is your clubhouse?"

"Not exactly," said Reese, and he easily picked up the vending machine revealing a hole in the wall and another set of stairs leading down. 

Reese held the machine without any visible effort and his mouth twitched into a hint of a smirk. Shaw rolled her eyes; superhuman strength was all well and good, but whatever Shaw thought about Project Lazarus in retrospect immortality was nothing to be sniffed at. 

"Come on, Sameen." Root took Shaw by the arm. "I'll give you the tour."

*

Despite his name Finch did _not_ have any weird bird based abilities, although he did have enough surveillance equipment to make the NSA cry... and a job offer for Shaw.

"Let me get this straight, you want me to join up with a slightly reformed supervillain and a man who's one bad life choice away from lurking on rooftops dressed as a bat while you play Alfred in a disused subway station?"

"I don't understand a thing you just said," said Finch.

"It means I'm not interested."

"Ms. Shaw, wait, please." Against her better judgment, Shaw waited. "The secret of your abilities is out thanks to that video. Now the way I see it you can either use those abilities to help people, or you can hide in the shadows until the government throws you into some CIA black site." 

It would more likely be an ISA black site. Ever since Shaw had walked off whatever special concoction Hersh had injected her with she'd been expecting her former employers to make another attempt to grab her - perhaps they were trusting to Shaw's own discretion, or maybe they were just leery of another bystander with a Smartphone. 

"Ms. Groves speaks highly of you," said Finch, "and finding people willing to work with her has been, ahem, difficult." Shaw snorted, that she could believe.

"Why are you doing this, Finch? You're--" normal? Human? "--not like us."

Finch's eyes skittered away behind his glasses. "I lost someone I cared for to a person with, er, abilities."

"I can respect that." Shaw thought of Cole, bleeding out from a high caliber round that should have struck Shaw instead; she would have been up and walking in twenty minutes. "But my answer's still no."

Root intercepted Shaw halfway to the door. "You said no."

"Which you knew I'd do."

"I did," Root agreed, "which was why I kept the nuclear option for last. Bear, _komen!_ "

*

"What was the worst time you died?" Root asked, and one of the things Shaw reluctantly liked about Root was that she said stuff like this like it was totally normal.

Root and Shaw were sitting in a diner, with Bear lying under the table wearing a service dog vest that Root had produced from God knows where; Root was incurring the wrath of the waitress by feeding him bites of pancake under the table. 

"It wasn't the time you killed me, if that's what you're thinking," Shaw replied.

Other people might find it weirder to be sitting here eating pancakes with a woman whose first words upon meeting Shaw had been _You're Sam, right?_ punctuated by two bullets to the chest.

"In my defence, I knew that you'd resurrect." 

Back during Project Lazarus the ISA had killed Shaw more than six thousand times - all of which had sucked - to test the limits of the experiment. But the worst-- Shaw shoveled a mouthful of pancakes into her mouth, and had a quick flash of blonde hair and a gun being leveled at her head.

She swallowed and said, "Being shot in the head wasn't exactly fun."

Root cocked her head. "No?"

"Anesthetic hasn't worked on me since the project, and even I didn't enjoy being conscious during a craniotomy." 

"That's our guy," said Root, wiping her mouth and balling up the napkin.

"What's his thing?"

"His _thing?_ " Root smirked and Shaw scowled.

"His power. Ability. Whatever."

"He doesn't have any. Carter thinks he might kill his wife, but she can't do anything unless the wife makes a complaint. For what it's worth, she's right." Root rose and flashed Shaw a feral grin. "Let's go have a word with him." 

*

Detective Carter and her partner sometimes kicked cases they suspected involved people with superhuman abilities to Finch. The NYPD wasn't cut out to deal with those cases, not least because they refused to admit that people like Reese, Shaw, and Root existed; the Man in the Suit was an urban legend, Lady Lazarus was a prank video, and Root... was a problem for somebody who was paid more.

Shaw first met Joss Carter in a bar after she and John had saved Leon Tao for the third time - Leon was supernaturally good at reading odds, and had regular human shit judgment. 

"What's your power?" she'd asked, knocking back her beer.

"Putting up with superhuman lunatics," Carter had said, tipping her head towards Reese. Shaw had laughed, a little too long, and when Carter had turned away Root had appeared, draping herself over Shaw's shoulder, her hands on Shaw's hips.

"I don't think you're the detective's type," she'd breathed right into Shaw's ear. "Oh, well. Her loss is my gain."

Shaw had huffed and elbowed Root in the ribs.

*

Shaw winced. If she was going to be stuck with a stupid superhero name then the Human Shield would suit better than Lady Lazarus, and if idiots were going to insist on shooting at her and her friends they could at least aim for a through and through.

The bullet was lodged between two of her ribs at an awkward angle, too awkward for Shaw to take out herself; the emergency room would have questions Shaw couldn't answer, like _how in the hell are you alive?_ Finch had gone grey at the sight of blood, and Reese was out running down a suspect with Carter, bickering all the way about whether she needed assistance from the Man in the Suit when it came to regular human garden variety crime.

This left Shaw with Root, who was sterilizing a scalpel and a pair of pliers over a flame, and looking entirely too happy about it.

"Do you want something to bite down on, sweetie?" Root asked with a cheerful leer.

"How the hell do you manage to make that sound suggestive--?" Shaw trailed off with a low, pained groan. 

She couldn't be killed, she healed quickly, and in the right circumstances she quite enjoyed pain - she did _not_ enjoy having a pair of pliers jammed into her ribcage. 

Root pulled the bullet free of Shaw's body and cut off her angry, pained hiss by kissing her. Root's teeth sank into Shaw's lower lip and her mouth tasted metallic; Shaw clasped Root's face and dug her fingers into the scar she found behind Root's ear.

Root pulled back with a gasp. "You know, it was fifty-fifty whether you were going to punch me in the teeth for doing that." Her eyes sparkled. "Would've been worth it."

*

Project Ordos had been part of the inspiration for Project Lazarus. The rumours that Shaw had heard - the ones Cole had repeated to her when they were on a mission and she couldn't turn off her earpiece - said that Ordos had spat out _two_ supersoldiers. 

Sometimes Shaw was tempted to ask Reese what exactly had happened to Kara Stanton, anyway.

If Stanton was still out there she was doing a better job of flying under the radar than her old partner - last week Reese had punched a guy through a load bearing wall and nearly brought a building down on them, and that was still an improvement over Root's fighting style.

Shaw watched the other woman closely during fights, for reasons that she was happy not to examine too closely, and though Root's technique was pretty good her movements were stilted and her gaze unfocused. It was like she was looking into the near future: if I sidestep - then... or, if I throw a punch to the solar plexus - then... 

Root had once described precognition as a giant if-then-else function; Shaw had called her a nerd, and Root had reminded her that she still called Finch 'Alfred'.

*

For some reason rather than telling Root to get dressed and get out, Shaw was stroking her thumb over the scar tissue behind Root's ear as they lay in bed facing one another.

"How did you get this?"

Root hummed. "Self inflicted, I'm afraid. When you're twelve and trying to perform brain surgery on yourself in the Texas backwoods things can go wrong. I still can't hear out of that ear."

"You did this to yourself."

The military experiments that had spit out Reese and Shaw weren't the only way people got abilities. Leon Tao and Zoe Morgan had both been born with their powers - Shaw had decided she liked Zoe right away, not least because despite her mind control abilities she'd resisted any temptation to join Finch's mini Justice League. And just this week Reese had run afoul of blonde bounty hunter who was willingly possessed by a Norse demigoddess. So somehow it didn't really surprise Shaw that Root had carjacked her own brain. 

Root was skimming her fingers up and down Shaw's naked side; further and further down with each pass. Shaw shivered and said, "And after that you, what, you decided to get a white cat and build a lair in a hollowed out mountain?" 

"Oh, _Please_ ," Root scoffed. "My evil plans were much more subtle than that." Root's hand stopped moving and her gaze fixed at some point over Shaw's shoulder. "I had this friend, Hanna, I wanted to save her and when I couldn't..."

"White cats and mountain lairs?"

Root smiled. "Something like that, yeah, until I met Harry." 

Shaw didn't say anything; she didn't totally understand Root's relationship with Finch, but he was definitely better suited than Shaw to hold the reins of Root's redemption arc. 

"What about you, Sameen, are you regretting taking this job?"

Shaw shrugged as best as she could while lying down. "I'm only in it for the sex and part ownership of the dog."

"Well then," said Root, closing the distance between them, "better make it worth your while."


End file.
